


The Bloody Standard

by shadow13



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
Genre: Bad French, F/M, French Revolution au, One-Shot, i warn that it is quite weird though, nothing is graphic; neither the sexy times or the violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-18
Updated: 2016-05-18
Packaged: 2018-06-09 04:39:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6890563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadow13/pseuds/shadow13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She is not an aristocrat anymore - she is a citizen of the Republic. But she'll only remain such under one man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Bloody Standard

**Author's Note:**

> I’m writing this while eating re-heated fries from the local pub, which I think is the right spirit for the thing, trying desperately to finish in time to still get all my chores done, and shower, and sleep. But I had to get this out ASAP. Beta is busy and I’m itching to put stuff up after a long hiatus, so this may not be edited. And I’m sadly not at home, so I don’t have access to my books to make this 100% amazing accurate. I am deeply sorry for this. It’s kind of hard to integrate history and canon anyway.  
> Was listening to “The Falcon in the Dive” as I do and started contemplating Petyr as a less-mental Chauvelin, and then this happened. Not terribly similar characters (excluding they both have a thing for red-heads), but go read/watch/listen to The Scarlet Pimpernel anyway, it is too much fun. If you want a more historical account of the revolution, I highly recommend the crazy entertaining “Viva La Revolution” by Mark Steel.  
> To say my French is rusty is to imply it still has structural integrity.

“Baelish’s whore,” they call her, in the halls, out of earshot. Which is not fair, for in so many ways, Sansa’s conduct has not changed. Her clothing is not more immodest than it had been, the careful lace cuffs that drip to her wrists, the heavy layers of silk that fall to her ankles, to the tiny slippered feet. There had been many women in Paris who showed far more of their busts than she ever had. Her hair is no longer powdered anymore, but she still keeps her curls well, beneath a hat when she goes out, sometimes with a parasol if the weather is good. She tends not to wear jewels any longer unless it is found to be absolutely necessary, and so only soft ribbons are tied around her neck. But always, always the tricolor, just above the heart, the left breast. It is reflexive to her now, to make sure the tiny round of fabric is securely pinned. This is her shield.

            “But who buys the little madame’s fine silk dresses, the embroidered shoes, the cakes while the army starves fighting the Austrians?” so goes the talk in dark corners of salons or indiscrete fetes late into the night. “Citoyen Baelish has her paid for as surely as any toy of the bourgeoisie.”

            “And that’s not fair.” Sansa does not bring it up often, but sometimes he will demand it of her, when she is stripped to her shift, wrists limp against tucked knees on the bed. “I never ask you for any of those things!” 

            “Poor little dear.” Petyr smirks, it’s easy for him to find it funny, pinching her chin between his thumb and forefinger. “You should know better than to take these things to heart; they pick at you to pick at me, that’s all it is. The Girondins are eager to see corruption anywhere they can find it, it’s nothing. Besides,” he rises to pour more wine, first pinching her cheek. “You know I like to spoil you.”

            She is just Citizen Stark now, where once she was the daughter of Eddard, Le Duc de Winterfell. Where once she had been the proud child of a noble line. At night, sometimes, she still sees the green of the manor grounds, how the hills seemed to roll on forever – and can hear her brothers practicing their fencing, her sister at the stables. It’s hard to imagine now, when the world has been totally turned upside down, that once there was a time when she might have been La Reine.

            Anyway, no one says these things to her face, so maybe Petyr is right and it doesn’t matter. He takes her to La Comedie Francaise in the evening, or else there is always a grand salon to go to; half the time, she hosts them, and drowns in the praise of being perfect and fashionable and elite once more. Someone reads The Rights of Man while standing on a chair. A girl she doesn’t know follows it up with The Rights of Women. Someone begins to read Thomas Payne, and the champagne pours and pours, until she can’t stand straight; until she knows she will feel Petyr’s hand at her waist, hot even through the corset, and they will go away again, into the dark. She thought she might hate that. She doesn’t.

            While she is his whore, she is safe.

 

* * *

 

 

            When her father was to die, her one true love had her under house arrest, and she thought, “Joffrey won’t do anything rash.” While the people of Paris were reading gazettes printed in underground presses, while they were filling empty bellies on a hatred of tyranny, all Sansa did was sit with her needlepoint and embroider passages of scripture. No papers were delivered to the house. She would not have read them even if they had.

            For the first few days, Sister Mordaine had kept her calm, the influence of an adult. “His Grace will see,” she assured her like the child she was. “Your father was not trying to back any rebels. He was only advising his king.” And always there were assurances that her sister would return as well, that Arya would not have been foolish enough to get herself into true danger.

            But there was no word from her father, no word from Arya, no word from the king. Instead there were his soldiers, and they took away Sister Mordaine, and it was just Sansa in the house. She stopped doing the needlepoint.

            When at last he brought her from the house that was now like a prison, Sansa was thin with dark circles under her eyes – and it was clear Joffrey was no longer her one true love. “I thought dismemberment for a time,” he purred to her from his gilded chair, feet propped on velvet pillows. “For treason. But I was persuaded, and so you shall see a show, my lady. A grand spectacle.”

            “Your Grace.” She had not yet risen from her position on her knees. “I beg of you, if-”

            “Begging bores me,” he replied. “I’ve heard so much of it. He’s been six days in La Bastille, your father. Let’s see what he looks like, shall we?”

            And she wished, in the months that followed, that she could remember even that of her father, as already he slips into a memory that fades only to red. All that she has left of that day is how hoarse his voice was as he stood upon the platform and recited what he was told to say. That, and the soldiers that put him to his knees.

            That, and the sword to the neck.

 

* * *

 

 

            It was impossible for her to leave Paris after that. The sans-culottes were pulling apart the Ancien Regime, they were shouting “ _A bas les aristos_! Down with the aristocrats!” in increasingly louder tones in the city streets. It was the National Assembly that held the country together now, not Joffrey as he spiraled deeper into his madness. He sent her to the prisons next; sent her, had her family dragged from Winterfell, said he’d have their heads as well as her father’s. Robb was with his regiment, Mother had assured her, wiping tears from her daughter’s dirt stained cheeks in dark, dank reunion. God had seen to that. No one knew where Arya was. Rickon cried a great deal, Bran was stoic. They ate molding bread and nothing else, and Sansa watched the bones of her mother’s wrists show through the skin as she split even her measly portion amongst her sons.

            And that was better still than being awoken from fitful sleep in a bed of straw, in the dead of night, by the scraping of a key in the rusted lock. This imprisonment was paradise compared to the soldiers grabbing hold of her mother, her brothers – and yet not her, for “His Grace is not finished with you yet.”

            “It will be alright,” Catelyn assured, as calm and graceful as she had ever been, but Sansa could not believe that anymore. “It will be alright!” as they dragged her out and then the boys, as Rickon screamed, and the girl dug weak fingers into the arm of the gendarme.

            “ _He’s just a baby_!” She hadn’t known she had a voice left. “ _He’s just a little child!_ Have you no heart, in the name of God, have you _nothing_!” The cell swung shut again, and she could not even hear herself screaming any longer.

 

* * *

 

 

            The door did open again, though she did not think it ever would, and she had to cover her eyes from the glare of the lamp. In all this dirt and filth, there were suddenly well-polished boots, and a heavy wool cape in dark blue, and if she lifted her eyes just a little she could see a tri-corner hat in beaver felt – with a strange little circle of fabric at the band, red and blue and white. Her cracked lips fell open, because she did not think these things existed anymore.

            “Mademoiselle.” He brought her dirty fingers, the broken nails to his lips, and he kissed them as if it were nothing. He smelled pleasantly, like mint, she realized. Her own stench must be overwhelming, but if it was, he did not give any sign. “You do not know what it is to me, to see that you still live.”

            “Monsieur Baelish…” It was like another world, that name, that face, the wings of grey in the dark hair. Another world when she was another person, which was true. “I don’t….I don’t understand.”

            He had taken the heavy cloak from off his shoulders and swept it carefully over her thin frame. The weight almost made her buckle. “You are to come with me, mademoiselle. I will take good care of you.”

            Sansa licked her dry lips, her heart beating in her throat. “The king has consented to release me.”

            She saw his lips curl at the corners in a suggestion of a smirk, and it was to be a look she would know very well. “The king is no longer the king.”

 

* * *

 

 

            He takes her, too, sometimes, to watery taverns when the mood strikes him, when he tires of the Committee of Public Safety and all its nasty little games. Over the bridge and the black water in the moonlight, to where the master of the house pours them heavy burgundies and his other patrons drink country ales. It’s not so strange anymore, all this fraternity, in the new land of Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite. No one bows or scrapes and no one bats an eye, because a man who serves the people should drink among the people, and so should his woman. They eat goat cheese and apples, and everyone gets drunk very, very quickly.

            Petyr likes to put her on his lap in these places, since it would be far too scandalous even now among his colleagues at their evening soirees. Sansa doesn’t mind anymore, because she gets so blisteringly drunk that everything feels right and wonderful, and she sings along to the country songs the other patrons sing in three different keys, no one on the same stanza. These are the places they most often see Tyrion Lannister, the most patriotic Committee member in the city – who gladly renounced his noble rights and gleefully watched his father’s head fall into the basket. And if anyone must speak of whores! Tyrion’s friends are the genuine sort, not Sansa, not _really_.

            La Marseillaise will be sung at least once in the night, _at least_. “ _Allons enfants de la Patrie_ -” Petyr jostles her on his lap and she grips his leg to steady herself.

            The elder Monsieur de Lannister went to La Guillotine only after his most royal grandson. Citizen Baelish had presented himself in his most official and elegant apparel, a well-starched white cravat pinned with silver at his throat. Sansa he kept beside him, and she had the tricolor at her breast. Joffrey might have even seen it in his ride in the tumbrel, but that is probably self-indulgent thought on her part. For how could he, with the rotten fruit pelted at his head – even the full chamber pot someone had managed to throw. How could he see one little pin on one girl in a sea of people who hated him almost as much as she did? Petyr thought she would beg not to go to the execution of the boy who had been king, but she had not.

            “To arms, citizens!” She sings it now, too, at the crescendo, if she has not done so before. She lifts her glass and lets the wine spill down her arm, so Petyr can laugh and lick it from her later as it drips. “Form your battallions! _Marchons, marchons_ -”

            She did not even turn her face away when the blade came down upon that royal neck. The put Joffrey on his back so he could watch Madame Guillotine give him his shave, for it was all he deserved. She watched it all, and realized afterwards she was grinning.

 

* * *

 

 

            _Sucre_ , he calls her, sugar sweet, and _cherie_ and _ma petite chou_. Sometimes it’s in passing, after they dine, and sometimes it’s in bed when he’s inside of her, but most often then it is _Sansa, Sansa, Sansa_. It’s hard to say which she likes best.

            For oh, she does. Outside, in the streets, she never does, demurs on any discussion of the relationship at all, but _oh_ , in the bed…There, she grips the pillow tight in order to stand the pleasure, the impossible bliss he brings her to when he moves within her and over her. Again, again, in, out- “Harder, Petyr,” from those once-pure lips. “Oh God, _mon Dieu, oh_ -!” And he slams their bodies together, harder, so that it should hurt and almost does, except _yes, yes, yes_ -

            “With me, you’re safe,” he promised her, and said nothing else, because she did not think of herself as Baelish’s whore at the beginning. The house he had taken up residence in was not his own; a count she vaguely knew but could no longer recall, she had been here once before with her mother for tea with the countess. Now it was the property of the State, and it suited the citizen’s taste. “Safe and home. But France will be free now, which means some….changes for you.”

            She had not understood him at first. The tricolor was the first of Petyr’s gifts, followed by the dresses, the long strings of pearls, the lemon cakes that might as well be sacraments for what they must have cost. But the tricolor was the most important, because Sansa was not an aristocrat anymore. She was a citoyenne, and she must never for even an instant forget that.

            He never told her what the price was for this, never leaned over her with wine-stained breath and told her the interest had come to bear. Petyr was far too subtle for that. But she began to know in the way his eyes lingered over her when they supped together, the way his lips would last on her fingers when he kissed them, or his hand guiding her at the waist or the small of her back. It was in the words, but also in the eyes, grey and green when they reflected the light of the fire, and a much deeper heat.

            Sansa went to him because she was afraid. She had nothing but what he gave to her – and gifts so easily given might be taken away. Petyr must never leave her alone again, of that she needed to be certain, or else it was back to the dungeons and the darkness, under Joffrey’s rule or some other mad despots. She was a smart girl, she knew by now the cost of losing power. With Baelish, she had it. It was not a hard trade to make.

            And she was afraid, too, to wait any longer, to find out who might take this from her – who might be worse. She opened her gown to him with shaking fingers, and watched the reverence that crossed his eyes, the awe. She could relax just a touch, because she had taken power from one of the most powerful men in France by exposing her pale and budding breasts. He kissed each one like it was the image of a saint, his fingers soft and cool on her bare hip…And so her career as his whore began before that, but this is when she became a master at the art. The title she did not care for; the role she quite enjoyed.

            Even now, her shyness mostly shed before him, she will lie naked as Venus upon the bed after their furious sport, and he will run the backs of his fingers over her stomach, carefully. “You are the perfect patriot.” He sounds so serious when he says it. “Red hair and white flesh and blue, blue eyes…” And so she is.

 

* * *

 

 

            Robb is a traitor to France now, because he is mounting an offense with the help of the Austrians, to save his country from its own destruction. One side phrases it one way, the other quite differently, but what it comes down to in the Committee of Public Safety is this: he proposes to kill Frenchmen, and that is quite intolerable. But the Committee is starting to eat itself, the Girandins versus the Jacobins, like a snake swallowing its own tail.

            When Petyr is drunk, he kisses her wrists and asks her, “Who will you rally to, my pretty girl, hm? Your brother – I understand the Austrians have given him land and a tidy sum to reestablish the monarchy in France – or the nation that saved you?”

            “I hate you when you ask me these things.” She means it, too, and he knows she does, but all Baelish ever does is laugh. And she hates him because Sansa does not know even now, with the beast baying at the door. Which will you pick, little girl? Who, and when, and which?

            She goes sometimes to Notre Dame de Paris; of course it’s not Our Mother anymore, it is the Temple of Reason. “Because,” Petyr tells her with his grey-eyed smirk, “someday we may even be free from the tyranny of God.” The change does not bother her like she thought it might, the girl who once stitched verse into her embroidery. Petyr says there isn’t a God, and after calling upon His might to save a boy of three and hearing nothing in return, she is inclined to agree with him.

            Sansa reads the gazettes now, and Rousseau and Jefferson, and she pays for one paper being hawked right outside the holy steps. A fishmonger’s wife bumps into her as she crosses the square, her head bowed as she labors with a barrel of salted herring. “Apologies, madame.” There is an ancestral fear in her eyes to touch the refined beauty in her silks, her carefully arranged toilette.

            “ _Citoyenne_ ,” Sansa corrects her, not unkindly.

            Choosing sides seems less difficult than she had imagined.

**Author's Note:**

> So I also was just forced to watch the trailer for the next episode and require comfort. Spin me sweet lies and tell me it's all going to be alright.


End file.
